Before the latest package of Common Cause news from around the country, I'd like to welcome one of our talented summer interns, Lee Levkowitz.  Lee helped with the past two updates and she will be with us the rest of the summer, summarizing the great work of many Common Causers from sea to shining sea.  Such as...

• Live National Town Hall - Why Diversity Matters
• New York City Leadership Introduces Tough Campaign Finance Limitations
• Connecticut Bill Requiring Legislators to Disclose Employment Passes House and Should be Signed into Law
• Common Cause Connecticut Calls for State Senate Minority Leader's Resignation
• Awards, Fundraising at Massachusetts Brunch
• Members of Congress to Propose Bill Allowing Outsiders to File Ethics Complaints

Hooray for Fridays!

The Massachusetts Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice has sued the city of Springfield for denying minority groups equal opportunities to cast votes.  The lawsuit claims that:

The lawsuit hinges upon several recently extended provisions of the Voting Rights Act that, inter alia, provide for language assistance in jurisdictions with significant minority populations.  If true, the case demonstrates that voting rights injustices need not be confined to Southern states.  It's a national problem.

It's Friday afternoon, and you know what that means - it's State Round-Up time.  Use the Comments section to fill us in on any news we missed from your state.

• Common Cause New Mexico threw a party to kick off their statewide Voters First Pledge campaign; it was a huge success.
  
• Georgia past legislation last year mandating voter ID cards, but less than a month before the primary, they still haven't issued them.
  
• Florida politicians and contractors toed the Sunshine line.
  
• The New York Legislature's session ended this week, leaving a lot of work to be done at the last minute.
  
• Massachusetts lawmakers have earmarked more than $700 million in spending on pet projects this year.
  
• A headlining corruption trial in Wisconsin has people considering the future of campaign finance and ethics reform in that state.  Meanwhile, the state's most notorious corrupt politician has been allowed to remain free on bail while his appeals are pending.
  
• California's anti-revolving door law for statewide officials has been expanded to include local and county politicians as well.
  
• The head of the Oregon ethics commission is leaving to head up the independent and better-funded sister commission in Nevada.
  
• Samuel Gresham of Common Cause Ohio appears tonight on a roundtable news show, talking about politics in Ohio.
  
• The Pennsylvania Speaker of the House has introduced his weak lobby reform bill while delaying and blocking stronger measures.  As imagined, there are a lot of unhappy people in Pennsylvnia right now.

Think earmarks tucked into larger budget bills for lawmakers' pet projects are a problem just at the national level?  Think again - the Massachusetts House and Senate have sent bills to the Governor totalling more than $700 million in spending.  

The thing about earmarks is that there's a fine line between bringing money home to your district as a way of representing your constituents' interests and blatant pandering to appearances in an election year.  Toeing that line is something many politicians have down to an art form, while others are pretty bad at framing their earmarks.

This AP story has details of some of the more...interesting earmarks.

Here's your weekly round-up of what happened in the states; this was a busier week than usual for the states:

• California Congressional candidates attended an ethics reform panel discussion.
  
• Rachel Leon, the Executive Director of Common Cause/New York, shared with us her bi-weekly radio address for the northeastern states.
  
• Kenneth Blackwell, Ohio's controversial Secretary of State, angered a lot of people by implementing voter registration rules stricter than the law calls for, including the New York Times.
  
• David Hamilton, the Maryland lawyer accused of being an unregistered lobbyist, has raised more eyebrows with emails that cast doubt on his claims.
  
• Massachusetts gubernatorial candidates have turned down public financing, meaning this will be one of the most expensive governor's races in state history.
  
• A candidate for county executive in Maryland is raising over $300,000, mostly from private fundraisers that are shadowed from the public eye.
  
• The Albuquerque city council failed to pass ethics reform legislation, but local advocates are planning to bring it back in the form of a public referendum.
  
• Some dude in Utah wants his local town council to vote to repeal the 17th Amendment, which made Senators popularly-elected officials, instead of political appointees.
  
• Pennsylvania may finally get a lobbyist disclosure law - it's the only state in the nation without one.
  
• A small town Illinois mayor was busted for decades of corruption.
  
• Everyone's curious to see what a pay-to-play trial getting underway in Wisconsin will reveal about the operations of state government.

Eileen McNamara, a Boston Globe columnist, puts the spotlight on Massachusetts campaign financing today.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Christopher Gabrieli has turned down public financing in order to avoid spending limits, which means his opponents will have to do the same if they want to be able to compete.  As McNamara wastes no time in pointing out:

And yet:

Much more on this situation after the jump.

Please join  all the folks at Common Cause Massachusetts for our annual awards brunch Sunday, June 11, at the Double Tree Guest Suites in Waltham from 10:30am to 1:00pm.

Tickets: $45 for one, $40 each for two or more.

This is the first Blog from Martin Evans. I am a Board Member of Common Cause Massachusetts. I do a lot of the work on the web-site -- but I still have a lot to learn.

I am retired so I have lots of time to write angry letters-to-the-editor; but I will keep them off this blog.